


I can feel the wheel but I can't steer

by xephyr



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Depersonalization, F/M, I... literally don't know what else to tag this with, Unrequited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-26
Updated: 2019-07-26
Packaged: 2020-07-20 04:30:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19986130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xephyr/pseuds/xephyr
Summary: Light and other radiation cannot escape from within the event horizon of a black hole, but the energy produced by a quasar is generated outside the black hole by gravitational stresses and immense friction within the material nearest to the black hole as it orbits and falls inward.Assuming, of course, that any of our observations hold even an ounce of weight.





	I can feel the wheel but I can't steer

Research was a never ending process. The more we know, the more we hunger, the more we _discover_ , the more desperate we become to _understand_. Understanding, of course, is impossible. We as individuals and we as a humanity can never hope to fully understand anything we are presented with. We grasp onto whatever we find, like a piece of driftwood bobbing along the ocean’s surface, not realizing there is an entire ship below us.

And until we finally _understand_ , we simply pretend to.

It is why false professions such as astrophysiology exists. Humanity clings to what it thinks it knows because if we don’t, then what are we? If we don’t know, then who does?

He wants to scream these thoughts at anyone he encounters that remarks upon his brilliance and his achievements because none of it actually matters. In the end, he knows nothing. As it turns out, however, that’s not what people want to hear.

When she asks him to provide formulas, it’s why he bites his tongue so hard that his teeth threaten to saw it in half.

“Distracted?” She sounds annoyed and he realizes he’s been looking at the same word on the paper he’s been presented with for the past minute and a half.

**_Quasar_ **

She’s standing at his side with multiple documents spread out over his desk and he realizes they’re in his lab. He has one, now. It’s not much but it’s _enough_ , and he knows better than to ask Talon for more. He keeps everything as pristine as he can but the papers covering his desk seem to mock him in their haphazardness. He tries not to focus on it.

“Apologies,” He musters up as he closes his eyes and shakes his head to clear the cobwebs. “I don’t recall what the question was.”

“Does this information make sense to you?”

He pauses. He reads it again.

“This is about the gravitational wave signal observed nearly sixty years ago. They thought it was an event where two black holes merged, but it…” He takes a steadying breath, remembering that he’s not speaking to an astrophysicist. She’s a genius, but it’s not her field. “It was a collision of two neutron stars.” He looks at her with a furrowed brow. “Why are you asking me this?”

Her eyes (mismatched, he keeps forgetting and subsequently remembering) are cold as they stare through him. “Is it anything like what you attempted at the space station?”

It’s cowardly, maybe, but his gaze drops off to the side. His mouth fills with saliva and he swallows instinctively. “No.”

Her eyes bore into the side of his head and he can feel her fury. She wants him to simplify it, she wants him to _tell_ her what she wants to know, but he can’t. After all, he doesn’t truly know anything.

Knowledge. Understanding. None of it exists.

“Do not make me regret taking you on as my project, Siebren.” 

His mind hangs on the word project. Before, he used to fixate on the moments she would call him Siebren or even Dr. De Kuiper, but he’s learned over time that she only calls him those things when she’s displeased with him. Lately, it seems, she’s settled on Siebren.

He was her project?

She thought of him as _hers_? She regards him as something she owns? She--

Suddenly, he remembers something.

“I’ve heard people whisper that I’m your pet.”

He doesn’t know why he says it and so desperately wishes he could take it back the second it leaves his lips. There was a point he wanted to make with it, but now he doesn’t recall what it was. It couldn’t have been a good point, if that was the case.

She’s still watching him but he no longer feels her fury. In fact, he doesn’t know what he feels from her. He still has a tight grip on the paper in front of him and he tries very hard to pretend he’s focusing on it.

**_The power of a quasar originates from supermassive black holes that are believed to exist at the core of most galaxies_ **

The silence stretches on for so long that he swears she’s doing it just to torment him. Finally, hours later (perhaps not), she speaks.

“And you wish that were true.”

_Yes_ , he doesn’t say. _Yes,_ he screams in the confines of his own mind, hearing it echo through the ugly hills and valleys of his brain matter which was once so pristine and beautiful. His teeth worry at the inside of his cheek. She wasn’t asking him, anyway. She _knows_ , because how could she not?

She sighs and it’s almost a sad sound. He corrects himself immediately. She is mocking him.

“Oh, Siebren. You’re hardly my type.”

It’s exactly what he expects and it’s something he’s been acutely _aware_ of for so long but yet he can’t stop the visceral _pain_ he feels as his heart sinks to pool at his feet.

Even if she hadn’t outright denied him, he would never have tried.

He wants to leave but he’s realized some time ago that they’re in _his_ lab and he has nowhere to escape to.

“Do you imagine it?” She asks, and it feels like a blow.

His fingers grip into a pale thigh, freckled and soft and beautiful under him. He doesn’t even know if she has freckles on her body because he never sees a single sliver of it barring her face and sometimes her wrists. Even if he could, he doesn’t think he would be able to look. It’s like staring at the surface of the sun, too bright and too intense, threatening to burn his retinas if he dares to look for too long.

Her hand idly cards through what remains of his hair. He’s sitting at her feet with a collar around his neck and he’s such a _good pet_ and--

“No.” It’s such a transparent lie that he doesn’t know why he even bothers with it.

Hundreds of images bring themselves to the forefront of his mind in a speed and intensity that nearly makes him dizzy and he has to force himself (like he always has) to breathe in through his nose, hold it in his lungs, and exhale steadily from his mouth. Or, he tries.

“Have you ever been with a woman?” She’s too close to him and something in him _shifts_ slightly to the left and he’s no longer ashamed. Anger courses through his veins as if it’s always been there, and he lets it wash over him. He turns his head to look right back at her and she raises her brows in surprise, perhaps not expecting this.

“I am not as _incompetent_ as you think I am,” His voice drops venemously as a muscle in his jaw twitches. “I am not a _joke_ , and I am _more_ than what my experience has made me.” He steps further into her space and she makes no attempt to step back out of it. Gods above, he wishes she would. “I was not always the shattered man you see before you now!”

He’s screaming, he realizes. His vision has gone cloudy and he desperately screws his eyes shut, trying to _breathe_. He feels himself completely losing control, totally unhinged, and he’s suddenly very scared. Could he hurt her, like this? Could she possibly stop him? _Keep it together_ , he tells himself. _Keep it together._

Breathe in.

“Show me what you would do.”

Instead of breathing out, he chokes.

A year passes. Or maybe it’s only half a second. It’s impossible to tell.

He doesn’t know who does it because it certainly isn’t _him_ , but his hands find their new home on the curve of her hip and along her jaw that’s so sharp it threatens to cut him and he’s _there_ , pressing his mouth to hers as desperately as he’s ever done anything in his entire life.

Her lips part for him and he thinks it has to be shock that does it, because she doesn’t yield to him anything more than that. He positively shudders as his blood runs through him way too hot, trying and trying and _trying_ to show her what he’s been dreaming of. She makes no move to fight him but she also does nothing to encourage him, either. Her lips feel cold against his (too _fucking_ hot) mouth and the hand on her jaw slides into her cropped hair, threading through it as desperately as if it was his last life line tethering him to this universe.

His other hand drags to the front of her button up shirt, along her slim ribcage and _up_ , and his wrist is immediately seized in a vice grip before he can go too far. He’s too greedy and her deceptively lithe and delicate hand tightens around him _painfully_ and he wants to apologize over and over again but he _can’t_ and he doesn’t.

No matter what he does she refuses to kiss him back and he’s getting frustrated. He can’t show her how good he would be for her like this. Maybe it means he isn’t good at this, but he can’t kiss her the way he _wants_ to without even the bare minimum of reciprocation and shudders again as he realizes how much he’s disappointing her. _She'll never love him the way he loves her._

It’s the hardest and worst thing he’s ever had to do, but he pulls back. His heartbeat echoes in his ears, threatening to deafen him. His eyes are still closed because he doesn’t think he can look at her ever again and he doesn’t know what he’ll _do_ if he sees an ounce of pity in her eyes. He doesn’t trust himself anymore. He extricates himself fully from her space as he takes a steadying breath, then five, and then ten, before he feels like he might have the courage to open his eyes.

When he does, she’s on the complete other side of the lab looking at him inquisitively as she shuffles through a stack of papers. Her hair is immaculately styled and her shirt is still tucked into her pants, pressed to perfection.

He doesn’t know what happened. His heart is still racing and he can feel the blotchy heat running up his neck up to his ears and an unwelcome tightness in his pants, and he doesn’t know where he is.

“Did you hear me?”

He answers her, or maybe someone else does. His voice comes out sounding like he’s been strangled. “I don’t recall what the question was.”

She huffs out a bemused chuckle and shakes her head at him. “I was asking about the properties of a quasar.”

He doesn’t hear her question, or he can’t adequately parse it. He runs a shaky hand over his face to make sure he’s _real_ and that he’s _here_ and he feels like he’s going to be sick. He’s struggling to come back to himself but he doesn’t think he can. He can’t.

“I have to go,” He blurts out. He realizes belatedly that she was still talking and that he’s cut her off mid-sentence but he can’t find it in himself to care.

He doesn’t wait for a reaction as he shoves out of the lab and into an empty hallway, letting the door swing behind him. He heads in whatever direction makes sense to him (He heads _east_ ) and he still doesn’t know where he is. His eyes are burning.

He doesn’t know where to go.

He’ll figure it out eventually.


End file.
